By MIKE LEE

Imagine sending a simple request for additional family leave to be with your newborn child and two other children and receiving a response coldly informing you that your position is terminated.

Shari Levy, a Patient Care Associate at Woodhull Hospital, experienced just this.

Levy, a hard-working Municipal Hospital Employees Union Local 420 member, began her healthcare career at Health+Hospitals (H+H) in 2013. Beginning in early June 2020, she took leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to give birth and care for her newborn daughter. At the end of the initial two weeks of FMLA leave, Levy requested and received additional concurrent leave under FMLA and the New York Paid Family Leave (PFL) through Aug. 28 of that year.

However, unbeknownst to Levy, hospital administration placed her on a three-day childcare leave of absence from Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2020. At the time, Levy was under the impression she was using FMLA or PFL benefits, not the child care leave benefits afforded to her under the Citywide Bargaining Agreement.

H+H coded the final days of Levy’s initial leave period as “child care leave” as an administrative measure to account for Levy’s days off rather than acceding to a bona fide request for a three-day leave. This was key in what transpired later.

Levy made an additional request in December 2020 to extend her childcare leave. In granting the leave request, Levy was informed that she had used both extensions, according to Health+Hospitals’s Child Care Leave Policy.

In a letter dated Sept. 29, 2021, H+H informed Levy that she was “due to return to work from a child care leave of absence on July 30, 2021.”

Levy emailed that she intended to return to duty, but needed additional leave time.

Hospital administration did not respond to Levy’s email. Instead, in an egregious violation of the collective bargaining agreement without filing disciplinary charges or granting due process, the administration sent a letter accusing her of job abandonment and terminating her employment on Nov. 12, 2021.

Levy called her Union Representative Sharon Steadman, who now serves the union as a Senior Council Rep. After she explained her situation, Steadman emailed H+H on Levy’s behalf.

This started a chain of emails between Steadman and various H+H bureaucrats who pushed back against her assertion that Levy should be granted an extension of leave time and to take her off the AWOL list.

Steadman was wary of the runaround she was getting from H+H.

“I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ I gave management the opportunity and the courtesy so I decided to file a grievance,” Steadman said.

She did so in December 2021, asserting that Health+Hospitals violated the Citywide Contract and that the administration wrongfully denied Levy an additional Child Care Leave extension.

“After all this back and forth, management didn’t believe that Ms. Levy was entitled to an extension. She was wrongfully denied an additional child care leave extension and then wrongfully separated from her employment. The only remedy was to reinstate her to employment with full benefits and lost wages,” Steadman said.

Undaunted, she pursued the case with Levy through the step process until it went before an arbitrator at the City’s Office of Collective Bargaining for consideration.

“There is a menu of leave options available to new parents, which is extremely difficult to navigate,” said Seth York, Assistant General Counsel for the DC 37 Legal Department. “In this case, H+H didn’t help Ms. Levy in any way so she was terminated.”

“She went out on leave. She had her child and then used PFL and FMLA, but there’s another leave available to H+H employees that she applied for and was granted. As it appeared, Health+Hospitals began coding leaves to cover themselves just for administrative-accounting purposes,” York said.

At the hearing, Health+Hospitals presented an inventive, albeit strange, and ultimately ineffective argument for terminating an employee on childcare leave.

“What was insulting at the hearing was that the witness for Health+Hospitals tried to spin their actions as doing something good for the member, saying this was a non-disciplinary termination so Ms. Levy could return to work at the hospital whenever she wanted,” York said.

“They attempted to deny her oath rights because they claim there’s no discipline — that they let someone go with three little kids who suddenly is without a job and out on maternity leave in this ‘gentle way.’ This was insane.”

On Aug. 11, 2023, the arbitrator ruled in favor of Levy, agreeing that the hospital administration terminated her without due process. She was immediately reinstated to her former position, including all benefits and seniority credits.

“I moved this process forward to let the arbitrator make the decision,” Steadman said. “Based on the facts that I had presented in earlier stages, including relying on the written operating procedures and the contract, I absolutely believed Ms. Levy had a winnable case.”

Carmen Charles, President of Local 420 Municipal Hospital Employees Union, said, “I’m extremely pleased with the representation afforded to my member and the arbitrator’s decision. H+H has been getting away with this practice because members often don’t seek the union’s assistance. I am happy that Sister Levy came to us for help when she did.”